Fiji Holds House of Representatives Election

Sept. 19, 2014, 1:47 p.m.

The election for the 50 seats in the House of Representatives in Fiji was held on Wednesday 17 September 2014. It was the first election since the military coup in 2006 that deposed the democratically elected government. Located in the Pacific, Fiji has a population of 903,207 with approximately 554,566 registered voters. The vote count is ongoing, but with 60 percent of the counting having been completed, Josaia Voreqe (Frank) BAINIMARAMA of the Fiji First party, appears to have won 60 percent of the vote.[i] Mr. BAINIMARAMA led the military coup in 2006. There were approximately 100 international observers as part of the Multinational Observers Group. The co-leader of the group, Peter Reith, said that the elections were “on track to broadly represent the will of the Fijian voters.”[ii] However, opposition parties claimed there was evidence of fraud, including “…missing ballot boxes, boxes that seemed to have been opened, and more votes at polls than registered voters.”[iii] Final results will be released within the next few days.